8 November, 2024
Let's get real. The re-election of Donald Trump brings once again into acutely sharp focus any posture - or more accurately, the lack of any informed and coherent posture - that Canada has pretended to adopt and continues to pretend to adopt concerning its own national security, its own national defence and its international treaty obligations in the fields of defense and security.
Unlike its closest trading partner, the United States, Canada adamantly and clearly refuses to produce and promulgate any semblance of an annual national security strategy and a national defence strategy. The last product approximating the same was a now-eight-year-old While Paper replete with platitudes and overly ambitious financial commitments none of which have been met.
Further, Trump has threatened to have the US leave the NATO treaty regime unless other NATO states assume a greater share of funding requirements, a threat even more profound and grave when recognizing the imminent threat of Russia in continental Europe and the Arctic. The increased financial pressure on remaining NATO members to fund its own strategy and operations further puts Canada’s lack of financial commitment and operational capability in defence and security into critically sharper relief.
The security threat is real. The lack of Canada’s commitment – more accurately, its blatant indifference, as history shows, and as current state practice perpetuates – to putting into real and sustainable effect a coherent national security and defence strategy and meeting its international treaty obligations is real. The political posture of an isolationist-leaning Republican executive and senate in the US is real.
This situation is not an alarmist’s reaction but a cold-blooded evidence-based analysis. It is neither a political party issue nor a government issue. It is an issue brought about by too many Canadians doing too little too late. Historians like Jack Granatstein agree Canada has never shed blood to protect its own territorial sovereignty, unlike many other sovereigns such as the US, UK, Russia, and China. This may account for Canada’s lack of political will in this regard.
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What does it take to introduce reality into Canada’s mindset? Russia may deploy three battle groups of troops combined with naval and air assets to build and sustain a base on Canada’s sovereign territory to support Russia’s exploitation of Canada’s unprotected Exclusive Economic Zone. China may construct artificial islands to do likewise – China currently enjoys enormous success in doing in the South China Sea.
Canada’s current defence posture is too weak to currently offer effective defence at the operational level. Finance, procurement, recruitment, and training to put one in place will take a decade.
This matter is not a question of an imminently forthcoming failure of Canada to defend its own sovereignty. It is now a matter of fact.